Canon H1 And Final Cut Pro Sync Issues
 

Hi guys! I need your help!
We shot a video using H1 camera from canon.
We have problems importing it in final cut pro hd
When I use the apple intermediate codec hdv it will import it but the audio sync is way off and the image even if it's imported at 30f/s it looks way faster (like 15f/s)
Anybody had worked out some way around this ,and find a way to trick the computer,or there are any codec plug ins it will work with final cut and canon h1?
Anybody have some Ideas?

Hi Luciano, what were the recording settings on the H1? Were you shooting in the 60i frame rate?

I shot on the F2 mode(which is 24p-that's how Canon calls it even if is not true 24 progresive),and HDV format,at the best quality of the camera!
But we did some tests here in the editting room,and we noticed that if we record on 60I mode HDV and in F1 mode (which is 30frames mode),than the Intermediate apple codec HDV in FCP HD will take the footage very well,totaly synced!Even I Movie HD allows you to import this to formats with no problems!
Our problem is that at the time of the video shoot we didn't had enough time to do tests with the camera(because we rent it),so we shot the whole thing on F2 mode HDV 24 frames!And from all the tests we did,we couldn't find a way to bring the footage into the mac at the full rez!
Thank's Chris! Maybe you have some Ideas!

If you have access to a Kona LH or LHe card, you can bring it in from the camera via HD SDI or component. This way, you can bypass the HDV codec altogether and use DVCPro HD. I've done this successfully several times with the 24F mode and it works fine.

It also avoids some of the annoying HDV stuff...like breaking clips into every time you turned the camera on and off. Nice to have this feature sometimes...other times it's very annoying.

I've been editing solely in DVCPro HD codec and have had no problems.

Hope it helps.

Kevin

Same workflow for me. The H1 HDV material (from tape) transfers quite well into DV100 1080i. Additionally, you can extract to 24p if you REALLY want to edit 24p...but it takes some doing. There are other codecs you can transfer to, but the H1/SDI/Kona/DV100 combo is hard to beat in purely practical terms. It avoids A LOT of headaches.

I consider HDV an acquisition codec only for my purposes. You can get a Kona LH for around $1600, or if you really want to do DV100 on the cheap, you can get a $595 Decklink HD card or just convert via software with MPEG Streamclip...but that would require A LOT of additonal time by capturing HDV via firewire and THEN converting through software. Again, save the headache and at least get the Decklink HD.

Don't forget, the Kona LH will allow you to monitor live HD from the timeline, via analog component HD, to just about any HD monitor...even a consumer HDTV.

If you don't have the Kona card, you can also capture your footage using a program called HDVxDV. It will capture and give you .m2t files. Use can then use that same utility to convert the .m2t files (using its export function) into DVCPRO HD encoded quicktime files. If you match your sequence setting in FCP to the clip, you should be able to drop the clips on the timeline without rendering.

What I don't know how to do is export into a non-interlaced format and edit on a 24fps timeline. Would also be nice to stay at 1440x1080 instead of the downsampled 1280x1080 that DVCPRO HD (60i) uses. Not a big deal, though, it looks quite nice.

You can get HDVxDV at www.hdvxdv.com -- download a trial for free and test your workflow. If you want to use it, buy online and download for $80 I believe.

I only got my camera a couple of days ago, hence I have been using HDVxDV in trial mode only, hoping a native FCP solution will show up soon. Probably will buy it soon though if something else doesn't show soon.

Hope this helps.

You have to get the clips in as 60i DVCPROHD, but then take your clips into Cinema Tools and do an inverse telecine, which analyzes the cadence and motion, and then extracts the material to true 24p (23.98) DVCPROHD.

My experience is that this works, but it's time consuming, and often the program misfires in figuring the pulldown, and still gives you interlace. What I've done is export a very short clip (less than 10 sec.) and try the inverse telecine. When I get it right, I bring in the entire material and let it render out the true 24p.

It's a hack-job trick for sure, but it's cool to get your 24F without another pass of compression, nor any interlacing at all.

When the heck is Apple going to make an announcement about XL-H1 support for FCP? It's mid February already!

Will the Kona LH card component input also transcode the Canon 60i footage to DVCProHD100 720P on the fly?

I'm told it will, but I'm wonder if this works through component in.

Also, NAB2006 holds Apple's surprises.

I'll give it a try, David. I haven't even thought about this possibility, but it would be cool if it works. Might be able to get that same overcrank look, only with H1 sharpness in the 720p format.

Pretty lame of Apple, for sure. I sometimes wonder if there's a little deference to Panny going on with them.

Two things:

1. After playing with this a bit more, I want to point out that I'm not actually clear on what's going on under the hood. For instance, Cinema Tools tells me the quicktime files exported from HDVxDV are 23.98fps at 1920x1080. Which is a good thing. But FCP claims otherwise. Hmm. So I retract my "downsampling" and "interlacing" comments from above.

2. Using the workflow mentioned above, I noticed some stutters in my pans on the exported video from FCP. Well, best I can tell, using Cinema Tools to conform the clip to 23.98 before dropping them into FCP fixes that problem.

Sorry for any spurious info in my first post. I remain unapologetic for this post. For the moment, anyway.

Thank's a lot guys for the info!
Unfortunatley we didn't have a Kona card!
My tech guy was on the phone with apple and they said official support for H1 will not begin for another 2 weeks.

"not another 2 weeks"... That can mean a lot! Or nothing...

Let me know.